Hasty Generalizations & Chris Sacca
In a year where hourly we’re shocked with unfathomable news from Washington, we have news fatigue and often digest just one soundbite from a story. The takeaway from the NYT piece about harassment in tech is that Sacca, McClure, Caldbeck, and Canter routinely used power to harass women. Harassment is in the zeitgeist, thanks to the heroic work of Susan Fowler, and none of us are surprised that more men in power have misbehaved. We just add more names to the list.
But Sacca doesn’t fit the pattern.
I’ve been sexually harassed a number of times, including, by one person, insidiously. My understanding of sexual harassment is that it either needs to be explicit or repeated. We have only a one-time allegation about Sacca. A one-time offense can be seen as harassment if it’s 1) explicit, leaving no room for doubt the person is suggesting sex, and 2) they’re in a professional power relationship over you.
There are variations on this, but there are also degrees of offense. Many are now calling Sacca a creep because of one gesture at a Vegas party, eight years ago when he was 34. Many are calling for an end to his career. Judgment like this is unfathomable to me. I feel like I’m reading Wolf Hall.
One should always believe the victim. I believe Susan Wu was uncomfortable when Sacca touched her face. I believe he touched her face, because generally I believe the victim. As a society, we owe it to them to believe their words.
We know little, but we are very quick to form judgment about deserved permanent punishment. There are no explicit texts. No repeat advances. If you type in “what constitutes” into Google, the top autofill is “sexual harassment” — there’s confusion around this. Unwelcome touch is on the list. But the most important factor is a “work environment,” making it scary or revolting to a person to go to work every day. We don’t know whether this Vegas party constitutes a work environment. Apparently it did to Wu, but it didn’t to Sacca.
I’d like to know more about the party and their relationship at the time. But do you notice that not many care about the point of view of the accused? We do this thing around harassment where, for fear of blaming the victim, we’d rather just assume the accused’s intent was deliberate exploitation. Worse, we don’t even care about their intent. And even worse, we’re ready to cast a shadow over their reputation forever. To assume who they are as a person based on one take of one incident, at a party, in Vegas.
Many find the fact that Sacca tried to dispute the story an attempt to silence Wu. Many jump to the conclusion that he wanted to deny the occurrence altogether. There’s a part of us that suspects the worst in people. That’s our reptilian brain, not our cortex. Couldn’t he have just wanted his version of the story told, while not denying the fact that Wu was made uncomfortable? When there’s a misunderstanding, there are two points of view, and both are valid. Smart people know this. They don’t invalidate the other’s feelings, but they also, fairly, ask for theirs to be heard.
As it is, we’re guilty of logical fallacies. We’re guilty of hasty generalization. Sacca got lumped together with repeat offenders whose actions have been well documented. In the wake of the NYT story, a woman tweeted that Canter had repeatedly propositioned her for a threesome. No such additional stories have emerged about Sacca. We’re guilty of what Rolf Dobelli calls clustering illusion. One of these things is not like the others, but we lump them together anyway. The brain seeks patterns and simplifies.
News fatigue is real. Jumping to conclusions is real. Journalists need to keep this in mind. We as a society are guilty of herd instinct and the logical fallacy of social proof — assuming that what everyone is doing is the right thing to do. Everyone is accusing powerful men of harassment, so bring out all the names and lump them all together. Just one minor gesture is enough — add them right along with Trump, Ailes, Caldbeck. “Grab them by the pussy, grab them by the face,” someone tweeted. We’ve lost our patience for nuance. Our thinking is polarized. If a man of a certain net worth is forward with a woman in any social setting, he should be shamed. We are shaming Sacca out of patterns in our minds, not out of proof.
And we’re guilty of confirmation bias. As more stories come out, we readily fill in the details. It has to have been inappropriate, of course. No way Sacca and Wu could have known each other well and she had hair in her eyes. No way they’d had a few drinks and were joking around. It has to be he was a sexual predator on the prowl, because so many others in the news are. Availability bias: we fill in the picture based on examples that most easily come to mind.
Tech Crunch suggests adding Sacca to a VC blacklist? Because 8 yrs ago he touched the face of a woman he knew well at a Vegas party? Knowing nothing else about that moment? Can we slow down?
Why can’t we accept, when it comes to harassment, that the victim definitely felt invaded, felt wronged, felt terribly. But that at the same time, without explicit or repeated sexual evidence, this momentary invasion of personal space doesn’t merit the eternal shaming of the accused? That a profound apology and restitution, an understanding of unintended consequences, might be a socially acceptable way to move forward, without a scarlet letter typed to anyone’s chest?
Or that even if there were repeat offenses, as with others in the NYT article, that we as a society expect a thorough recognition of wrongfulness, that we banish the person to a place of solitude, thought, and healing, but that when they emerge, we’re able to give them another chance? That at no point do we brandish them with epithets referring to their nature (“creep,” which was all over Twitter regarding Sacca) because that shaming only impedes their transformation, and transformation is what each of those people, and our culture, needs?
If you’ve read anything more contrite & thoughtful about insidious sexism in tech than Sacca’s apology, especially from a male point of view, I’d love to read it. I’m grateful for the women in the NYT article for coming forward, because the two pieces together will change our culture profoundly.
The parable of the prodigal son has often moved me to tears. Such a profound transformation, such brokenness, a shattering of worldview, met with deep love and forgiveness. When you see someone so humbled, so aware of the consequences of their behavior, how not to allow them to start fresh, from that thoughtful, new, reborn place?
With my latest sexual harassment, I spoke and wrote to HR several times. They spoke to him several times. His way of appreciating a woman’s beauty was to look her up and down every day. To grunt. To tell you you were beautiful. To look at you while you walked away from him down the hall. While all women at work contorted their faces in disgust at the mention of him, I’m the only one who complained.
My harasser didn’t want to change. Smart people embrace change. They embrace feedback. Smart people are capable of transformation. We as a society must be honest with each other, but also hear each other out. We need to slow down and pay attention to nuance.
More stories of harassment are likely to come out, and we need healing strategies. We need to allow those accused to have their minds changed. Many of the powerful men in our culture got their training in their frat days, when aggression was taught, expected, and rewarded — it got them women and promotions. This is fast changing, but minds are changed slower among those who have power than among those who don’t. We need to recognize that aggressive male behavior is taught, and that while men are responsible for their behavior, it’s influenced in large measure by the culture that formed their belief systems. This is why, after a contrite apology and an outline of steps already taken in the right direction, I’m quick to forgive. Sacca has already course-corrected. The others he was lumped with have not.
If we punish those accused too forcefully (blacklisted for life for one gesture, as Tech Crunch so readily volunteered), others will clamp down on victims with possible manipulation, threats, and other forms of silencing. We need all the stories to come out, and we need women to feel safe sharing them.
Right now, we are bandwagoning. We need to stop, take a breath, and move forward with clarity. Let’s remain curious about the other side of the story. Let’s try to hold ourselves to higher standards, and not become a society that punishes longterm based on half a tale and a pile of assumptions.
